p. 135 | News and Miscellany

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Mar 30, 1876

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 2, No. 17.

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News and Miscellany.

—The Black Hills cover an area of some 7,000 square miles.

—It is reported that Don Carlos intends seeking refuge in England.

—Women are now employed almost exclusively in the Italian telegraph offices.

—Keyser, one of the Tweed ring in New York, has been taken to the lunatic asylum.

—The President has nominated John M. Coglan of California, as Chief Justice of Utah.

—China comes out of her seclusion, and, taking her place beside other nations, appoints resident representatives to the United States, Spain, and Peru.

—Los Angeles county comprises nearly 2,000,000 acres, two-thirds of which are fit for cultivation or grazing purposes. Only 54,000 acres are cultivated.

—Steps are being taken by the Board of Supervisors of San Francisco, to call a public meeting and send a deputation to Congress on the Chinese immigration question.

—The inundation of the Danube continues to do great damage in Hungary. Thousands of dwellings have been carried away or ruined, and great numbers are still threatened.

—Mukhtar Pacha telegraphs to the Porte that the Herzegovians show signs of discouragement, and many of them have submitted. Refugees are beginning to return to their homes.

—The announcement of the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States declaring the laws of California in regard to Chinese emigration null and void has produced a profound sensation.

FIRE AT TARSUS.—On the 26th of January Tarsus, the city made famous by its connection with the history of the apostle Paul, was visited by a fire which caused a loss of 750,000. The bazaar was reduced to ruins. As the buildings had been closed some time, the fire was supposed to have been caused by rats gnawing matches of which there was a quantity on the premises.

—London, March 7. The Pall Mall Gazette's Copenhagen correspondent writes that the last mail from Iceland reports that 500 inhabitants of the Westmanna Islands group, lying to the south of Iceland, and belonging to Denmark, are probably dying of starvation. The fisheries there last year were unsuccessful, and the inhabitants, fearing their food would not last them through the winter, sent to Iceland asking for supplies.

—Professor Crookes of London claims to have been successful in weighing a ray of light. By a most delicate apparatus he has estimated that the light of a candle weighs .001728, or nearly two thousandths of a grain. Taking this as an approximate starting point, we find that the light thrown out by the sun on the earth is equal to about thirty-two grains per square foot, or fifty-seven tons to the square mile, or 3,000,000,000 tons on the whole earth, a force that, but for gravitation, would drive our planet into space.

—The inundations in Hungary are increasing. Many persons have been drowned near Posen. The railway from Posen to Thorn is threatened with destruction. A Vienna dispatch to the London News reports that fifty-five Hungarian villages near the border, are entirely submerged, the water over some of them being nineteen feet deep. A hundred factories and fifty other buildings at New Pesth have undermined and fallen. It is feared that when the waters retire, a vast number of houses in Buda and other places along the river, will fall. Twelve thousand out of the eighteen thousand inhabitants of Althofen are homeless.

—This is what P. T. Barnum told a Philadelphia audience he would do: “I will undertake, and give bonds for the fulfillment of the contract, that, if the city of Philadelphia will stop selling liquor and give me as much as was expended here for liquor last year, to run the city next year, I will pay all the city expenses; no person living within her borders shall pay taxes; there shall be no insurance on property; a good dress and suit shall be given to every poor boy, girl, man and woman; a barrel of flour shall be given to every needy and worthy person; and I will clear a half million of dollars myself by the operation. It would be the best business speculation I was ever in. Unfortunately they wouldn't give it to me. As Benjamin Franklin said, ‘We are paying too dear for our whistle.’”